



Benjamin Franklin 



By 



Albert H. Smyth 



An address delivered at the Annual Dinner of the 
Americayi Philosophical Society^ Apr-il^ 190J ; afid repeated 
with slight alteration before the Franklin and Marshall 
College, upon the occasion of the fubilee Anniversary of that 
institution, fune rgoj. 



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Sixty-two years ago in the chief city of this 
state, before the Mercantile Library company, 
the Reverend William Ellery Channing spoke 
on the " Present Age." He described it as an 
age stirring, pregnant, eventful. He said : " It 
is an age never to be forgotten. Its voice of 
warning and encouragement is never to die. 
its impression on history is indelible. Amidst 
its events the American Revolution, the first 
distinct, solemn assertion of the rights of men, 
and the French Revolution, that volcanic force 
which shook the earth to its centre, are never 
to pass from men's minds. Over this age the 
night will, indeed, gather, more and more as 
time rolls away ; but in that night two forms 
will appear. Napoleon and Washington, the one 
a lurid meteor, the other a benign, serene and 
undecaying star. Another name will live in 
history, your Franklin ; and the kite which 
brought lightning from Heaven will be seen 
sailing in the clouds by remote posterity when 
the city where he dwelt may be known only 
by its ruins." 



/ 



The history of this extraordinary man is the 
story of a struggle, the record of a life that began 
in lowly surroundings and ended in splendor. It 
contains, therefore, the substance of the tales 
that have chiefly interested the world. His life 
is universally known, for his autobiography is 
the most popular work of that class in the 
English language. 

Everyone knows his journey from Boston to 
Philadelphia, how he was nearly drowned in 
New York bay, how he walked from Perth 
Amboy to Burlington, 50 miles through ever- 
during rain ; how he took boat at Burlington 
upon an October afternoon and landed at the 
foot of Market street in Philadelphia the follow- 
ing Sunday morning ; how he walked the quiet 
streets, a ridiculous figure munching a roll, and 
how he found shelter that first night in the 
strange city at the Crooked Billet in Water street. 
The strange mutations of life ! This vagrant, 
adventurous lad, ragged, travel stained, awkward, 
with shirts and stockings in his pockets and a 
Dutch dollar his whole stock of cash, this 
humble soap-boiler's son was to become the 



JUL J. ^ l^«^^ 



most conspicuous and admired figure of two 
continents, to stand before kings, to converse with 
scholars and to receive every honor that the most 
venerable academies of learning could bestow. 

"Seest thou a man diligent in his calling, he 
shall stand before kings, he shall not stand be- 
fore mean men." " This proverb," said Franklin, 
"my father was fond of quoting to me. I did 
not think that I should ever literally stand be- 
fore kings, which honor has since happened ; 
for 1 have stood before five and even had the 
honor of sitting down with one, the king of 
Denmark, to dinner." It was as the wily and 
strategic politician who had lived to clutch the 
golden keys, and mould a mighty state's decrees, 
and shape the whisper of the throne, that he 
met on terms of perfect intellectual equality 
with Burke and Chatham. It was as the phil- 
osophical thinker and writer that. he sat at dinner 
with the " Decline and Fall of the Roman Em- 
pire " and was embraced by Voltaire in the hall 
of the Academy while enthusiastic sages and 
tribunes thundered their applause : " Behold 
Solon and Sophocles embrace 1" 



'^-^Ak 



Never was there a man more idolized. Every- 
thing about him was copied and extolled ; his 
spectacles, his fur cap, his brown coat, his 
bamboo cane. Men wore their coats and hats and 
carried their snuff boxes a la Franklin, women 
crowned him with flowers, and every patrician 
house showed a Franklin portrait on the wall, 
and a Franklin stove in one of the apartments. 

Franklin's mind drained a large surface. He 
was one of the most versatile of men. He left 
not one of his many talents uncultivated ; and 
while the aristocratic world and the arena of 
statecraft shouted his praise, the serener sphere 
of scholarship and science extended to him its 
amplest recognition. He who had never been 
to college received the honorary degree of doc- 
tor of laws from St. Andrews, Edinburgh, and 
Oxford, and the honorary master of arts from 
Harvard, Yale, and William and Mary. 

He was elected unanimously a fellow of the 
Royal Society, an honor voluntarily conferred 
and all fees remitted, and from that venerable 
society he received the Copley gold medal. In 
France he became a member of the -Encyclo- 



Pc'edists and the Society of the Economists. In 
Germany he was received with respectful honor 
at Hanover and Gottingen. 

Franklin's mind was naturally receptive and 
he was restlessly curious about all natural 
phenomena. Doubtless the scientific bias of 
Pennsylvania developed in him the instinct or 
predilection for natural philosophy. In Penn- 
sylvania he became familiar with the work of 
David Rittenhouse, Humphrey Marshall, John 
Bartram and Gothilf Muhlenberg. While his 
investigations in electricity were his chief con- 
tributions to scientihc knowledge, I cannot for- 
bear from reminding you how he studied the 
ojulf stream and, with the true enthusiasm of 
the scientific investigator, even while suffering 
the torments of sea sickness, took careful and 
frequent note of the changing temperature of 
the water. 

In company with the chemist Brownrigg of 
Cumberland 'he put forth into the midst of 
Derwentwater, when its waves were beaten to 
fury and to foam by a tempestuous mountain 
wind, and successfully tried the experiment of 



calming the lake by pouring oil upon the water. 
Aristotle and Plutarch and Pliny had said that 
it could be done. Franklin was the first among 
experimental philosophers to demonstrate that a 
few drops of oil would tranquillize turbulent 
waters. So interested was he in his experiment 
that he was wont to carry a few drops of oil in 
the upper hollow joint of his bamboo cane to 
watch the effect upon wind-beaten pools. 

Is it too fanciful to take this scientific ex- 
periment as an illustration of Franklin's career 
and character? He seems to me to have gone 
through life pouring oil on troubled waters. He 
was an emollient softening the asperities and 
crudities of contention. His writings were al- 
ways conciliatory, irenic. He refrained from 
disputation, and tried by every means in his 
power to splinter the broken joint between the 
colonies and Old England. From the first he 
was loyal to the English government. He assured 
Lord Chatham that "having more than once 
travelled almost from one end of the continent 
to the other and kept a great variety of company, 
eating, drinking and conversing freely with 



them, I never had heard in any conversation from 
any person, drunk or sober, the least expression 
of a wish for a separation, or hint that such a 
thing would be advantageous to America." 

The British empire with homely comparison 
he likened to a handsome china vase, 'twere a 
great pity to break it ; and he was convinced 
that the dismemberment of the empire would 
mean ruin to all its parts. When it was urged 
that in time the colonies by their growth would 
become the dominant half he answered, "Which 
is best, to have a total separation, or a change 
of the seat of government ?" Here he seems to 
have caught for a moment a glimpse of an his- 
toric vision of which Lord Rosebery in dream 
has recently seen the phantom retrospect. Is it 
fanciful, asks that eloquent statesman to dwell for 
a moment on what might have happened if the 
elder Pitt had not left the House of Commons 
when he became first minister? 

" He would have prevented or suppressed the 
reckless budget of Charles Townshend, have 
induced George 111 to listen to reason, intro- 
duced representatives from America into the 



Imperial Parliament, and preserved the thirteen 
American colonies to the British crown. 

The reform bill would probably have been 
passed much earlier, for the new blood of 
America would have burst the old vessels of 
the constitution. And when, at last, the Amer- 
icans became the majority the seat of empire 
would perhaps have been moved solemnly across 
the Atlantic, and Britain have become the his- 
torical shrine and European outpost of the world 
empire. What an extraordinary revolution it 
would have been had it been accomplished. 
The most sublime transference of power in the 
history of mankind. The greatest sovereign in 
the greatest fleet in the universe; ministers, 
government, Parliament, departing solemnly for 
the other hemisphere ; not as in the case of the 
Portuguese sovereigns emigrating to Brazil under 
the spur of necessity, but under the vigorous 
embrace of the younger world." 

Well, some such vision seems to have wavered 
for a moment before the unimaginative brain of 
Franklin as he reflected upon these things. But 
after years of labor he could only say, "I do 



r 



not find that I have gained any point in either 
country, except that of rendering myself sus- 
pected by my impartiality; in England of being 
too much an American, and in America of being 
too much an Englishman." 

He found himself entirely in accord with 
Burke and Chatham with regard to the unity 
and integrity of the empire, and with regard to 
the unjust taxation of America. He said, "I can 
only judge of others by myself. I have some 
little property in America. I will freely spend 
nineteen shillings in the pound to defend the 
right of giving or refusing the other shilling; 
and, after all, if 1 cannot defend that right, I 
can retire cheerfully with my little family into 
the boundless woods of America which are sure 
to afford freedom and subsistence to any man 
who can bait a hook or pull a trigger." 

It was the famous affair of the Hutchinson 
Letters which made the maintenance of this 
mediatorial position impossible to him. It is a 
commonplace of American history. Certain 
letters written by Thomas Hutchinson, royal 
governor of Massachusetts, to friends in England, 



in which he recommended the sending of troops 
and men of war, and advising that in the col- 
onies "there must be an abridgment of what 
are called English liberties," fell into the hands 
'of Franklin. How Franklin became possessed 
of the letters remains still a mystery. The source 
was undivulged by him. He transmitted them 
to America. Massachusett Bay petitioned the 
government to remove from office the writer of 
the letters, in the fierce quarrel that ensued 
one man was wounded in a duel, and the 
solicitor general, Alexander Wedderburn, after- 
wards the earl of Roslyn, assailed Franklin 
before the privy council with furious invective. 
It was a scene, as Lecky has said, well suited 
to the brush of an historical painter. For more 
than an hour Franklin stood, tranquilly, silently, 
before his malignant foe, his coolness and 
apathy in striking contrast with the violence and 
clamour of the Scotch declaimer, while grave 
men clapped their hands in boundless amused 
delight at the baiting of the American. " He 
has forfeited," cried Wedderburn, "all the re- 
spect of societies and of men. Men will watch 



him with a jealous eye ; they will hide their 
papers from him and lock up their escritoires. 
He will henceforth esteem it a libel to be called 
a man of letters, a man of three letters — homo- 
trium literarum, fur, a thief." However we may 
poise the cause in justice's equal scales, it is 
chiefly interesting to us as the critical event 
which converted Franklin into a stubborn op- 
ponent of the English government, and changed 
the American sentiment toward him into enthu- 
siasm and affection. It was the only cherished 
hatred of his life, and how deep the poisoned 
shaft had sunk into his soul we may infer from 
the well authenticated story that four years later 
when the treaty of alliance with France was 
signed, Franklin dressed himself for that day's 
historic achievement in the same Manchester 
cloak of velvet which he last wore when he 
stood under the pitiless storm of Wedderburn's 
vituperation. Considered in the perspective of 
history I find Franklin distinguished by his 
versatility. He was the first American to tran- 
scend provincial, colonial boundaries and limita- 
tions. As postmaster he went abroad over the 



country and took the wind of all its moods. 
He was the first man of science and the tlrst 
man of letters to achieve a wide and permanent 
reputation in Europe; and three of his writings, 
his "Autobiography," "Poor Richard" and "Father 
Abraham's Speech" are abiding monuments of 
American literature. As a diplomatist his signa- 
ture is appended to the treaty of alliance, the 
treaty of peace, the Declaration of Independence 
and the constitution. He is the only man who 
signed all four of those state papers. 

Most great men are like Labrador spar, as you 
turn it in your hand it remains dull and lustre- 
less until you strike a particular angle, when it 
shows rich and brilliant hues. Franklin, while un- 
endowed with imagination or inspiration, displayed 
astonishingly various capacity. He had clear 
vision, original observation and abundant worldly 
wisdom, yet withal a low aim and was content 
with earth, its fruits and prizes. What is Good 
is with him what is good to eat and to wear. 
He shows a certain Philistine content with 
prosperous living. His ideal was a life of thrift, 
caution, husbandry, comfort and rational enjoy- 



merit. He knew no sad torment of the thoughts 
that lie beyond the reaches of our souls, he 
was undisturbed by the burden of the mystery 
of the heavy and the weary weight of all this 
unintelligible world. 

While the New Englanders were contemplat- 
ing with awe the dread mysteries of Eternity he 
was minding his shop and his small concerns 
of earth. A frank acceptance of the material 
world and a desire to do some practical good in 
the world— these things are the life of Franklin. 
And so he founded benevolent and useful insti- 
tutions — hospitals, libraries, schools and learned 
societies, invented stoves and lightning rods and 
labor saving devices, lighted and paved streets, 
and protected towns from fire. Such utilitarian 
subjects occupied him. He did not squander 
his thought in desperate ventures of new found 
and foggy metaphysics. 

One great factor in his success and a secret 
of his far-extended fame was his complete 
command of clear and correct English. Addison, 
Bunyan and Defoe were his masters and his 
models in the difficult art of expression. He 



never attained the grace and delicacy of Addison, 
or the imaginative fervor of Bunyan, and his style 
is most nearly allied to the pedestrian prose of 
Defoe, who was the first great English journal- 
ist and writer of reportorial narrative. Franklin's 
English is no intertissued robe of gold and pearl, 
no taffeta phrases and silken terms precise, but 
honest, homely, hearty speech, without obscurity 
or ambiguity, an English that speaks in russet 
yeas and lionest Kersey noes. 

He lived a happy life, or perhaps 1 should say 
a cheerful life. He made all of himself that he 
could. He had abundant recognition, was well 
spoken of, even with reverence at a time when 
party feeling was filled with rancor. His cheer 
and confidence became the encouragement of 
America and the inspiration of France. When 
dark tidings of disaster came from America the 
Frenchmen who sought " Father Franklin " to 
condole with him, found the patriarch philo- 
sophically calm and confident. To all such 
reports he replied, ca ira, fa ira — it will go on. 
And when dark days came upon France, in the 
awful storm of the revolution, and men de- 



spaired of everything, they remembered the 
serenity of the great American, and they re- 
peated to each other until the repetition became 
a watchword of hope and courage and endur- 
ance — " Ca ira, ca ira." Yes, his life was cheerful, 
his accomplishments prodigious, his consumma- 
tion quiet and his grave renowned. 



